I'm trying to change the cover on two ebooks (Using Calibre) that I downloaded from Gutenberg. They seem to be stuck on their default covers - the white ones with the text that Gutenberg gives them.

I have selected the books in Calibre, edited the metadata to change the cover image to my selected one, then transferred them to my Kobo. When I disconnect and boot up my Kobo however, there is no sight of my new covers and only the default ones! I have tried deleting and retransferring. I have also searched in my Kobo directory and deleted all reference to either book from the device (I actually found a .png image of the original covers and deleted that), to no avail. It's as if Calibre is just not transferring the cover images at all.

The cover feature worked fine on other books so any help you might be on finding out why it isn't working here would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks! The books were already in epub format but I used the conversion feature and the new copies seemed to keep hold of their covers. Any idea why that was happening with some books and not others? Will I need to do that every time?

For the Kobo readers, Calibre copies the epub to the reader and then lets the reader handle the epub from there. Calibre does not copy a cover over separately. After it is disconnected from the computer, the Kobo device will read all new books it finds, add them to the database so they appear in the library and extracts the cover from them to display. If the book doesn't have a cover, it uses the first page as the cover.

What you missed is that when you add a cover to an ebook in Calibre, it is not actually added to the ebook file. It is metadata stored in Calibre database/library. To get it into the ebook, and hence somewhere the Kobo reader can see it, you have to do something such as a conversion in Calibre. You only need to do this once for each ebook unless you decide to change the cover.

Thanks! The books were already in epub format but I used the conversion feature and the new copies seemed to keep hold of their covers. Any idea why that was happening with some books and not others? Will I need to do that every time?

I always do it every time. Then I know where I am at If I change a cover or series name etc. I reconvert. I have original_file turned on so calibre keeps (and uses) the original just in case.

If you prefer not to reconvert you can use the calibre viewer to see if the cover and metatdata etc. is embedded. If the cover does not show in viewer it is not embedded. You can see the actual metadata in the book by hitting the 'i' for info icon.

As to why some books and not others, probably some books had a cover already embedded that was similiar enough to any added/changed cover to pass.